This is the crossword puzzle thread

All I can recall from my crosswording era is that any clue regarding sea eagles has the answer: erne.

Aimless, see the link about a dozen posts up.

The local syndicated easy one has the classic "fruity drinks" clue every other day.

I spent the last few days of being sick solving a book of dumbed-down xwords that the man got for me from the dollar store. Perfect way to pass the time without really having to think.

Dude but now looking at the other thread it had hell of ASTA and ESAU solutions. And some four-letter word for a water pitcher that started with EW but never bothered to look at the finished word once I'd filled in all the other clues. Another frequent one: tipple = SOT.

EWER.

A lot of the crosswords I'm like, "I couldn't do 1/7 of these clues had I not known the bible so well as a youth." Then they throw some "Desperate Housewives" clue at me and fuck if I don't feel like an old, old, old person.

I feel totally lame, jaymc, for having a hard time making my own Jumble puzzles after reading yr breezy description of how you throw together a themed crossword.

We forgot "case=E---" on the other thread.

Is that ETUI?

I tried to play that in Scrabble recently, except I think I thought it was EPUI.

I can't find EPUI in an English or French dictionary, but you do get quite a few google hits for it.

OK, newest one now on Flickr. Have been v. busy with playing music in the last week, but I've got a good theme idea I'd like to work with soon.

Sorry, it's late, that perhaps wasn't clear. The link goes to the puzzle I made a week ago and already sent to Casuistry and robotsinlove in Across Lite format. (I've also revised some clues based on their suggestions.) I wasn't able to make a new one this weekend but hopefully soon.

I kinda dislike the structure of American xword puzzles, because of the way they so often seem more like sets of mini-crosswords that have a single words linking them to one another. I do enjoy doing them from time to time though. Norwegian ones tend to be a lot more interlinked, which I suppose makes them a bit easier once you get going. That's not a rip on your crossword btw, jaymc, just a general petty gripe.

Incidentally, is the Harper's one ridiculously difficult, or am I dumb? I only recently started subscribing to the mag, and I couldn't write a single word in the December xword!? Then I got the solution, and uh, yeah, that was surprisingly unhelpful to me for figuring out how to solve one.

In case anyone is curious, here's what a typical Norwegian crossword looks like:
http://www.tema-x.com/images/702139_2_14.jpg

Norwegian crosswords are some crazy shit!

Cute theme fill from the local free weekly: WWIREMOTES (instead of Wii remotes, all the theme answers had one letter changed).

Jaymc, I will print out your new one for my flight on Fri.

Yeah, lots of European X-words have those arrows. Øystein, re: The Harper's puzzle, you will have to practice to get those cryptic clues. If you want to post a few clues you couldn't understand, I can explain them to you. Or you can post them on the cryptic threads, and the Brits can help you too.

Also, I was going to try to do the puzzle you posted, as one of my many abandoned projects was to learn Norwegian, but I couldn't read it.

Games magazine used to run puzzles with arrows, although nothing quite as complex looking as that. It was fun enough, but having clues that fit in the boxes was a bit stifling.

But yes, cryptic puzzles like Harper's are entirely different and play by their own rules. I rarely get very far into the Harper's one.

i don't know what a "cryptic crossword" is.

Cryptic clues have two parts: one part gives the meaning and the other part gives the wordplay required to construct the letters of the defined word (sometimes this is just another definition of the word). Up to solver to figure out where break between two parts is. Classic example is a clue like

City stylish in the past (7)

Chicago = CHIC + AGO

interesting!

Here's another type of clue, called a container I think:

Foot gets bandage for side (5)

Facet = F(ACE)T

There's totally a mistake in this week's Tausig puzzle.

I'll bet Mel Taub wouldn't have made a mistake.

I did it today, what's the mistake?

The coin is spelled NICKEL, not NICKLE. Although I belatedly realized that this wasn't as big of a disaster as it first seemed: he just needs to move the circle to the first E rather than the last E in SNICKERDOODLE.

Cruel irony: Jordan noticed a mistake in my last one. 33-Down was just mislabeled as 38-Down. I've fixed it.

There was a giant mistake in the Tausig from ... last week, or two weeks ago, maybe. I'm just not doing it anymore. That guy sucks. I mean, nice puzzles, but I can't think of any greater failure from a crossword editor than to have significant errors in your puzzle, like, regularly! Frequently!

I think I remember that one. I still like (love) the dude's sensibility to the point that I don't care about the odd error.

Wait, do you remember what the mistake was, N? This is the first time I've noticed one, and I've been doing them pretty much every week for the last year. I guess what's tough is that he's his own editor.

I can't remember, because I couldn't search up this thread to record it -- I just recall winding up with four empty squares that were completely WTF, because the words were right but they just didn't cross that way! Basically like the nickel/nickle thing, where one letter is a square over and a tiny region is just plain wrong.

There's another one I do remember, although I didn't bother with it long enough to decide if it was a puzzle error or mine -- it had to do with the birthplace of the first UN Secretary General.

Oh, wait, no, I figured that one out eventually.

sounds like maybe you were RONG on the first one, nabs!

unless you are talking about this?

Speaking of Tausig puzzles: the numbering of the clues in the Onion one this week (the sports issue) is completely off!

-- nabisco, Saturday, December 29, 2007 10:37 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

No, it was not numbering: it was a letter in the wrong square. I know, I know, I assumed I just had something wrong, but there comes a point where it's like no, obviously these are the answers, they've just don't actually cross right, because someone placed a letter wrong!

Jaymc's completing without noticing makes me sound wrong, I know

Which one was it? Now I'm curious, because I've been keeping up with the puzzles too and I don't remember anything like that.

http://groups.google.com/group/inkwell

I DON'T RECALL

I mean, it's possible I missed a week or two within the last year, too.

(okay i'll leave it alone, but did you look at the link?)

I was gonna say I'd go through those and try to find the error (or potentially MY error), but they've corrected previous errors for the web. I can't imagine there's any correction difference between NYC and Chicago/Madison print editions, though, so maybe it was down to some spelling variant or something.

The title of this one is The National League.

There's also another one I did that I haven't put up yet. But that's because there are two versions of it: dirty and clean. The bottom half is the same for both versions, but I completely redid the top half in the event that I might be able to submit it to a newspaper. (The theme is pretty solid.)

is there a dub version?

Yes, it's instrumental, though.

Also, do you have Across Lite yet, Jordan? You can do my puzzles on-screen now!

no, i keep forgetting to download it! will do.

Let me know when you do, and I'll send you the puzzles over e-mail.

I now have a program that will let me play .puz files on my iTouch! (I know it's not called an iTouch, but it should be!) Except it's v. 0.1 and the interface is not yet very good. But it's an exciting development in the land of jailbroken iTouches, let me tell you.